


and i don't know how i can do without

by OceanTheSoulRebel



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura's gone but the lions are still here, Canon-adjacent, Dissociative Episode, Gen, Multi, Post-Canon, S8 exists but it's slightly different, and look: some goddamn hugs!, background Sheith - Freeform, background hidge, brief mention of: blood, brief mention of: injury, i warned you, lance needs a goddamn hug, paladin cuddle puddle, past major character death (allura), sad lance feels incoming, so like..... yeah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-27 03:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20753519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanTheSoulRebel/pseuds/OceanTheSoulRebel
Summary: Lance has a breakdown and the Paladins come running.





	and i don't know how i can do without

**Author's Note:**

> As mentioned in the tags, there are some brief mentions of blood, injury, and burning. They aren't super graphic, but if that bothers you, please know that those are in this content and make a good decision for your wellbeing! <3 Also, Allura's gone (but I refuse to believe she's dead, that's fucking dumb. The execs can fight me.)
> 
> Thanks to Abbey ([@sepiacigarettes](https://twitter.com/sepiacigarettes)) and Jess ([@warpspeed_chic](https://twitter.com/warpspeed_chic)) for squeeing and dying with me, and for your excellent eyes as betas. <3 You both rock.
> 
> Title from Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now," which strikes me as a feelsy Allurance-adjacent song. <3

_ “There has to be another way.” _

_ Allura smiled wanly and took his hand. The infinite white around them shook ominously at the edges of his vision. She stepped forward and held him. _

_ “Lance,” Allura whispered. Her lips brushed over the curve of his ear, breath ruffling his hair. _

_ “I just found you.” Lance squeezed her tight and tucked his face against her neck, breathing in the light, lingering scent of her shampoo. Maybe if he held on better this time, maybe if he were stronger, she wouldn’t leave him behind. Allura could stay, and Allura could live, and they could figure it out together, the two of them. The six of them. “I can’t let you do this. I won’t.” _

_ “Lance,” Allura said again, more urgently. _

_ “No, I—” A sob shook through him. He tightened his arms around her, but she was too strong; she pulled away, just as she did every time. Allura’s hands framed his face, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones. “Please don’t leave me,” he breathed. “We just found each other.” _

_ Her eyes shone briefly, and she dipped her head. “Close your eyes.” Allura’s hands were warm against his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, just before sealing their mouths together. _

_ Lance’s face tingled, then burned, and he squirmed. “Wait, what,” he tried to say, panicking. It was like she was cutting into him with every soft pass of her thumbs. Lance tried to wrench away; she only held him tighter. “Allu—” _

_ She tore away, her hands and eyes still glowing. Fear contorted her features as Allura was pulled backward by whatever force filled this in-between realm. Her mouth moved, but he couldn’t hear. Lance broke away from the paladins only to be held back. _

_ “No!” he screamed. Hands scrabbled at his arms and shoulders. "Allura! Allura!” _

* * *

Lance jolted awake, heart thrumming erratically in his ears. His face burned. He gingerly raised his fingertips to his cheeks, tracing the white-hot spots on the crests of his cheekbones. "What the hell?"

He scrambled from his bed and stumbled through his room into the small attached bathroom. The fluorescent light stung his eyes as he blinked at his reflection. Two blue crescent moons stared back at him, glowing dimly against his skin. 

“Allura,” he breathed. Lance slumped against the counter, his fingers tracing the marks that had been burnt into his face. His eyes watered. “Allura,” he whispered again. “Don’t go.” 

But she was gone—had been for two years. Allura had left him with marks that burned and glowed but didn’t give him any explanations for what they were, what they meant. 

Lance closed his eyes against the tears that fell. They stung where they crossed the hot blue marks. He slumped to the floor, uncaring of his knee catching against the cabinet doors of the small vanity sink. 

“Don’t go,” he sobbed. Lance wrapped his arms around his middle. It wasn’t enough, it would never be enough. His body shook with jerky shudders. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.” 

Grief welled in his middle and spilled out through every pore. His body had been an open wound for two years, and it had never lessened, had never healed. Lance clawed his fingers into his ribs. “It’s not fair. You—you gave, and gave, and _gave,_ and we did nothing!” 

The words ripped from his chest, and he flung his arm out to bang his fist at the solid wall beside him. Lance howled, ineffectively beating against the wall, the counter, kicking his bare feet at the wooden doors of the cabinet. _“She died, and we did nothing!”_

His foot cracked the wood panel and clattered through it, landing hard on the sink’s pipes hidden within. He sagged to stare numbly at the bleeding, ruined mess of his heel and ankle. There would be splinters, he knew distantly, and the way his foot bled spelled trouble, but he couldn’t care, not now. It wasn’t important now.

“Please come back,” Lance whispered. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the bathroom wall, thumping quietly against the tiles. “Just… come back. Come home. I won’t even be mad, I promise. Just please. Please, Allura...”

* * *

He came back to consciousness abruptly, as if falling from a great distance only to slam back into his body. Lance jerked, sputtering around a mouthful of hair, and he flailed his way to sitting up among a nest of blankets and limbs.

A hand thumped against his back. “Shut up. If you wake Shiro up I’m gonna kill you,” came a familiar grumbled, grumpy voice from behind him. 

He looked around, dazed. Yep, Keith glowered at him from in front of the door, curled with his back to Shiro’s chest, one sharp eye open and narrowed at him. Keith only huffed and turned to tuck his face into Shiro’s arm, waving his hand dismissively Lance’s way. 

Lance snorted in disbelief; he couldn’t help it, it was an incredulous sight, out of context. Keith’s hand shifted to flip him off. Lance laughed, high and reedy and nervous to his own ears.

A pair of yawns at his side pulled Lance’s confused gaze. On his right, Pidge scrubbed her hands across her face, and from his left Hunk patted Lance’s arm with sleepy affection. 

“Hey, buddy,” Hunk murmured. He draped his arm around Lance’s belly to give an awkward but welcome hug. “How’re you feeling?”

“I,” he started, unsure, “I, uh, fine?” 

“Liar,” Pidge groused, “and at—” she checked her watch and bared her teeth almost menacingly “—it’s not even 0600.” Pidge swore a long string of curses under her breath and turned to smother herself in her pillow.

“Katherine Matilda Holt, you kiss your mother with that mouth?” Lance asked, almost scandalized, hand splaying over his chest.

She squinted at him to the sound of Keith’s aggravated huffing. “That’s not even my name, asshole. And no, I don’t kiss my mom, just yours.”

“Oh! Oh! Very mature, yeah.” 

_” Guys…”_ Keith warned.

“C’mon, guys,” Hunk wheedled. His hand brushed against Pidge’s shoulder and she bristled a moment before leaning into it, only to slap at Lance’s knee with a free hand. “It’s late, or early, whatever, and—” 

“Mmph, sssstupid mornings.” 

Everyone stilled, and Keith all but growled, _“Laaaaaance…” _

Lance twisted to watch Shiro blink into the low light of the room, rising up to his elbow. He scratched his fingers along his jaw. “G’ morning,” he yawned. He turned his sleepy gaze to Keith and smiled, sleep-warmed and dopey. "Mm. Hey, baby." 

Keith scrubbed his hands over his face. “You shouldn't be up for another couple hours, at least. I _told_ him to let you sleep—” 

“‘S fine, it’s fine, I’m up, I’m up.” Shiro groaned and sat up fully to lean against the door. His eyes landed on Lance, and he smiled gently. “How’s your foot, sharpshooter?” 

“My what?” Lance turned to look at the foot in question. It lay bandaged and clean, wrapped in a professional dressing and set in a plaster cast that ran from the bridge of his sole to halfway up his calf. He wiggled his toes and almost shrieked in relief when they followed his command. “W—what happened?” Lance twisted himself until he couldn’t go any further and collapsed on his belly, limbs akimbo, into the makeshift nest that housed the sleepy Paladins. 

“Best as we know, you kicked your cabinet. We found you just about catatonic in the bathroom. Got you to the infirmary, looks like you messed up your foot pretty badly and barely missed slicing through your Achilles tendon. You’re officially on bedrest and light activity for the next month.” Pidge peeked at him from her pillow. “Man, I knew you were clumsy, but that’s bad even for you,” she tried. The joke didn’t reach her eyes. 

Lance glanced between the four of them. “How…?” 

“Yellow told me.” Hunk shrugged. “Said you needed help.” 

Pidge leaned into Lance’s shoulder. “Green woke me up.”

Keith yawned. “Black and Red both yelled at me, then Hunk and Pidge tried barging into our apartment.” 

“Atlas woke me up in a panic and said one of my kittens was hurt. What?” Shiro asked defensively when all eyes zeroed in on his blushing face. “She’s only two, she doesn’t understand ‘pilots of sentient space lion robot ships made from magical interdimensional ore’ yet!”

“That’s, like, ridiculously cute, man,” Hunk said, not bothering to keep the snorts of laughter from his words. “They’re like, cousins or something, right? Atlas and the Lions? Alfor made the Lions, and Allura kinda made Atlas, well, _Atlas,_ with the castleship crystal.” His brow creased with consideration. “Actually, I wonder if they recognize each other? Sentient ship to sentient ship and all?” 

Lance dragged in a gasping breath. _Allura._

Pidge laid her hand on Lance’s shoulder and gave a brief squeeze. “Hey,” she said quietly, “hey. Come on, what’s wrong? What’s going on?” 

He shook his head against the tears that threatened him again. “I just,” he sniffed, rubbing his face into his pillow. “I just really miss her, y’ know?”

“Aw, buddy.” Hunk pulled Lance the short distance into his arms, and Pidge shouldered up against Lance’s other side to wrap around him like a koala. Lance could hear, then feel, the warmth of Keith at his head, and heard Shiro shuffling against the hodgepodge of bedding with a groan.

“She came to me in a dream, again; it was... well, you know, the end of reality and stuff, but it was different this time.” Lance shuddered, remembering the panic on Allura’s face when she was torn away from him. He rubbed his cheeks into the pillow, the cheap polyester rough against the still-tender skin of his scars. Lance hesitated, unsure, before adding in a quiet voice, “I think she was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear her.”

Someone breathed a sotto,_ Oh damn, _and Lance only nodded. 

Keith shifted to pat Lance’s shoulder in an attempted measure of comfort. It was… really nice, actually. “Like what you said about Shiro, or…?” 

Lance shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. He took a sharp breath in and wished it could dislodge the unease from his lungs. “Was probably just a dream.” 

“We’re here for you, Lance,” Pidge said with a yawn, “but I might be more ‘here’ if we slept in a bit longer. You know me and mornings.” 

A beep of a datapad sounded above Lance’s head, followed by muted taps of fingertips on the screen. “Nothing pressing until drills this afternoon,” Keith muttered, “and those will have to be rescheduled, anyway. Get some sleep, everyone; we’ll take the day and get Lance’s paperwork from the medbay later. We’ll need to rearrange some scheduled blocks, but we’ll get to that when we get to it.” 

Shiro chuckled. “Don’t you need to clear that through the proper channels?” 

Keith sighed, audibly aggravated. “Fine. ‘Dear Admiral Shirogane,’” he simpered, saccharine in his sarcasm. Lance looked up in time to see him miming writing in the air and couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him.

“‘Please allow the Voltron Paladins a day off due to medical emergency and/or injury,’” Keith continued, “‘even though we’re not technically under your jurisdiction, being that we only have a treaty of partnership with the new United Nations and their Galaxy Garrison, and I can technically do what I want with my own crew. Sincerely, Keith Kogane-Shirogane, Black Paladin of the Voltron Coalition, Earth Ambassador to New Daibazaal, and your fucking sleep-deprived husband.’ There, better?” 

“I think I could rubber-stamp that one through, yeah,” Shiro snorted. “Alright, kittens, back to bed.” 

_ “Finally,” _Pidge groaned. She play-slapped at Hunk as he laughed, jostling Lance in her efforts. Her breath rustled Lance’s hair at his nape, where she huffed her sleepy displeasure. “Big heart to heart in a couple of hours. Lance, didn’t they give you enough pain killers to knock you out?” 

“That’s actually a good question. Do you need anything?” Shiro asked. “They gave you something for the pain when we took you to the infirmary two hours ago and gave me a pain management plan, but they’ll still need to call in the actual prescription when the pharmacy opens again at 0800.”

Lance burrowed into Hunk’s shoulder, careful of the dull ache now registering in his foot. “I think so?” he said. “I think I just need to sleep.” 

“We could all use it,” Hunk agreed. “Let’s take a nap and come back to it in a bit, yeah?”

Pidge yawned in Lance’s ear. “Already… there…” 

Lance smiled wanly and almost jerked at the haphazard ruffling of his hair from above_—_Keith, maybe, more likely Shiro if his prosthetic arm was on. He didn’t look up to check; it wasn’t important, anyway. 

He let himself be warmed, inside and out, falling asleep to the steady rhythm of their slow breaths. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I appreciate comments and kudos, and strive to answer them all! 
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr: [@Ocean-In-My-Rebel-Soul](https://ocean-in-my-rebel-soul.tumblr.com)  
Follow me on Twitter: [@OceanSoulRebel](https://twitter.com/Ocean_SoulRebel)


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